Industrialized countries are implementing more and more educational policies, but these policies face serious problems in their attempts at obtaining concrete and satisfying results. The implementation of a policy, especially the “hybrid” government strategies selected, e.g. policy implementation strategies that rely on both “top-down” and “bottom-up” strategies, seems to be a key element to consider ensuring their efficiency (Gather Thurler, 2000; Van Zanten, 2004; Fullan, 2005, 2007). However, knowledge of these implementation strategies is incomplete and underdeveloped, and the reasons behind these political choices are rare. All this makes the development of actual and sustainable policies difficult (Fullan, 2000; Leithwood & Earl, 2000; Van Zanten, 2004).
In 1997, Quebec implemented a large-scale reform of its educational system, which focused explicitly on “hybrid” government strategies for its success. The present study focuses on this reform, more specifically on the changes to the elementary school curriculum, in order to: 1) recount the key moments of the implementation of the policy associated with the different dimensions of the concept of “hybridity”; 2) identify and describe the government strategies; 3) formulate provisional explanatory hypotheses and validate them; 4) develop an explanatory model; 5) explain the impact of the proposed model on existing theories.
This case study used two complementary data collection methods: a review of the literature and semi-structured interviews. The review of literature was based on formal documents from the government (N=14) and a media review, from 1995 to 2003 (N=648). The interviews (N=23) aimed to collect the comments of 1) idea men and policy-makers; 2) policy implementers; 3) idea men and policy implementers; 4) experts. The combination of the data collected establishes a comparison between the process and the structure (Meny & Thoenig, 1989), the prescriptive and the actual, in order to understand the real dynamic behind the implementation process studied.
Thus, through the study of the implementation process of the Quebec elementary school curriculum reform, we can recount the implementation model of Quebec’s curricular policy. This innovative implementation model shows that non-improvised and demanding hybrid strategies were thought out and proposed by the Quebec government. This elaborate implementation model led to the belief that the Quebec curricular policy could possibly obtain tangible and sustainable results in schools. Analysis of the implementation structure reveals that the implementation strategies in the field stuck closely to the “hybrid” strategies originally planned. However, the implementation process did not evolve in the expected way. The actual implementation in the field was difficult and risky, despite the “hybrid” approach adopted. The elements explaining the implementation problems are presented and analyzed in this study.